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Cardinal Keeler honors Basilica’s 100,000th visitor

Catholic Review
August 3, 2007
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As Rosalie Dohm of Woodbridge, Va. climbed the stairs to the nation’s first cathedral Aug. 2, she thought it was unusual that Cardinal William H. Keeler was personally greeting each of the visitors from her parish tour group. The 66-year-old parishioner of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Lakeridge, Va., then found herself in the spotlight when Cardinal Keeler handed her a package and balloons and congratulated her for being the 100,000th visitor to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary since it reopened last November. “I’m dumbfounded,” said Ms. Dohm, who attended the tour with her parish’s Silver Foxes senior citizen group. “I was excited about seeing this place, but wow. What a shock to be told you are the 100,000th visitor since it opened back up to the public.”

Bulgarian absolved of involvement in plot to kill pope dies

Catholic Review
August 2, 2007

SOFIA, Bulgaria – Sergei Antonov, accused by Pope John Paul II’s would-be assassin of being part of a Soviet-bloc plot to kill the pope in 1981, was found dead in his Sofia apartment. Bulgarian police confirmed the death of the 58-year-old Antonov Aug. 1, but said his death had occurred several days earlier. He apparently died of natural causes. Antonov was deputy manager of the Bulgarian state airline’s Rome office in the early 1980s. Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk captured in St. Peter’s Square moments after shooting the pope and convicted of attempted murder for the crime, had told Italian investigators that Antonov and two employees of the Bulgarian Embassy in Rome were involved in the shooting. He said the Bulgarians were acting on instructions from the Soviet secret police.

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